


Memory Lane and Pastries

by ignis_scientia_estrogen_brigade



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, F/M, Final Fantasy XV Spoilers, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-11-29 15:00:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11443305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignis_scientia_estrogen_brigade/pseuds/ignis_scientia_estrogen_brigade
Summary: New timeframe, new setting, new OC. His duties fulfilled to his majesty and the crown, Ignis Scientia attempts to move on with his life in a post-starscourge Lucis, but old wounds continue to impair the strategist's sight—as well his ability to reopen his heart to another.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> -I don't know why, but all my OCs seem to wind up with British accents. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

_From Ancient Greek ὀφείλω (opheílō, “to increase, to strengthen”); **to help**_

 

* * *

 

Interviewing bakers was a far cry from hunting daemons, but nights in Lucis had grown rather quiet since the dawn had resumed its monotonous cycle, and a man had to make a living somehow.

“So when can I expect to start?”

Ignis Scientia resists the urge to sigh, and instead offers a pleasant expression vaguely in the direction of the gentleman seated across from him. “The final decision will be up to Mr. Tostwell. We still have one more interview scheduled, but you can be sure to hear from us should the position align with your, er,  _talents_.”

A deep chuckle erupts from within the man’s belly. “I know I don’t have a whole lotta experience kneading bread, but I sucker-punched a few Flans in my day. Ain’t much of a difference, am I right?”

“Indeed.”

The strategist then listens as the man rises to his feet, and waits until he is out of earshot before finally indulging in his previously repressed exhale. Like Ignis, the candidate had once been a daemon hunter, and had found himself conspicuously out of a job these past six months; unemployment of the masses was a small price to pay for humanity’s salvation, but  _unlike_ himself, the man had few skills beyond slaughtering satanic beasts to fall back on in times of peace.

It wasn’t just Flan Man with a painful lack of culinary proficiency, however; the woman before him showed little comprehension of the slight flavor nuances differentiating Cleigne Wheat from Fine Cleigne Wheat, and the man before her actually thought a Zu egg and a Bennu egg were one in the same.  _At this rate_ , Ignis thinks,  _Mr. Tostwell ought to spend more time perfecting his offal stew recipe and leave the bread baking to Surgate and Tozus._

He shifts in his chair and tilts his head to one side, cocking an ear back toward the marketplace he had memorized by sight when his vision was still intact. The sounds of sleepy daytime Lestallum slowly stirring to its familiar nightlife can be heard on the humid breeze: the beating of drums, the strumming of stringed instruments, the increase in distinctly feminine chatter as the women employed at EXINERIS Industries ended their shifts. His right eye is sensitive enough to light to register the sun fading behind the alcove beside Tostwell’s Grill where he is conducting his interviews; if his last candidate didn’t show up soon, he’d inevitably have to fight the evening crowds on the way back to his apartment.

The former royal advisor had made a concerted effort over the years not to let his disability define him, but few things irritated Ignis more than bumping into people unawares. Even with his hearing as keen as it was, he couldn’t entirely escape stepping on someone’s toes in tightly congested spaces, and he wasn’t quite sure what bothered him more: the unsympathetic gruffness of others when treaded upon, or the whispers of pity that followed when they finally recognized just what it was they were looking at.

Or perhaps it simply reminded him of his younger days, when Noct would push him in jest as they ran through the wide open fields of Duscae, for no reason other than to elicit a disgruntled reaction from him.

“Mr. Scientia?”

He snaps his head around and ignores the sudden aching in his chest. “Apologies. I didn’t hear you approach.”

The light footsteps he had missed while mired in his own nostalgia move closer to where he is seated. “Do forgive me for my tardiness, the power plant released us a bit later than usual this evening. I let Mr. Tostwell know over the phone earlier, but if you’d prefer to reschedule—” 

“This is fine.” He fixes a genial smile to his face and tilts his chin up toward the woman speaking to him. “And please—call me Ignis.”

“Ophelia. A pleasure to meet you.”

The strategist’s ears prick at the clipped accent of his newest interviewee. “Pardon the assumption, but you don’t exactly sound like a local.”

“I’m from Galahd, originally. Although my family relocated to the crown city when I was a child.”

“Is that so? I hail from Insomnia myself.”

“I know.” A pause. “Your reputation precedes you.”

His placid smile falters slightly. “Does it?”

“Those who lived under the crown have long memories.”

“Yes. Well.” His hand moves to his frosted visor purely out of habit; they are situated across the bridge of his nose adequately enough, but it gives him something to do with his fingers other than twiddle them like a fool. “Some memories are best left in the past. Shall we begin?”

The skittering of a chair along the ground echoes against the walls of the alcove. “Of course.”

“I presume you are aware that Mr. Tostwell is seeking an artisan specifically to expand his repertoire into baked goods. Something about keeping up with the local competition.”

“I am.”

“The position entails working directly under me, but you’ll have the freedom to develop the bakery department as you see fit. I’ve learned it’s best to lighten up on micromanaging others, lest they intend to organize a mutiny against you.”

The strategist is mercifully rewarded not with the sound of crickets chirping, but of Ophelia’s polite laughter. “That’s certainly a generous arrangement. Is it my understanding that you took over lead chef duties from Mr. Tostwell in recent months?”

“Correct.”

“I knew I’d seen you here before. I rarely have the time to eat out, but the Lasagna al Forno this establishment serves is delightful.”

The warmth of her voice matches that of the breeze stirring in the strategist’s hair, and his smile returns in earnest. “May I ask what you like about it?”

“Well,” she concedes, “most people settle for ground Dualhorn steak to use in their filling, or Behemoth tenderloin if they’re feeling adventurous. But I’ve found that the gaminess of the Jabberwock sirloin compliments the Cleigne Darkshells quite nicely.”

“That’s… rather insightful of you. Most people can’t seem to make out the difference.”

Her chair creaks against the concrete, as if the enthusiasm lacing her tone has found its way down the legs of her seat. “It’s a subtle distinction, but it really makes all the difference. I’ve only had lasagna prepared that way once before—at an establishment in Altissa.”

“Maagho,” he says, nodding his head absentmindedly. "I learned my recipe from the proprietor there, as it so happens.”

“My parents and I spent a holiday in Accordo when I was a teenager. Altissa was quite a beautiful city at its height.”

He hesitates, and reaches for his visor once more. “It was.”

His interviewee is either unaware or unaffected by his sudden diffidence, because her cadence remains upbeat. “I’ve heard that Accordan refugees have begun returning to Altissa. Word is that the secretary is committed to rebuilding the capital within two years.”

“Good to hear,” he replies quickly, eager to steer the conversation away from less palatable reminders of the past. “So tell me, Ophelia—what is it you feel qualifies you to assume a position as a baker? Any past experience in pastry making?”

“Yes and no. My father ran a bakery in Insomnia before the city fell, and had hoped to reestablish the trade once we’d settled in Lestallum. My job at the plant is steady work, but I fear with people returning to the other parts of Lucis, layoffs will be inevitable. Thought I might dust off a few of his old recipes and try my hand at the craft.”

“Is he also looking for work? Mr. Tostwell might be persuaded to hire a two-person team, under the appropriate circumstances.”

“No,” she says. “My father is no longer with us. Neither of my parents are.”

His perceptiveness must have atrophied right along with his sight, because Ignis could’ve kicked himself for not picking up on the slight hitch in her voice sooner. “My condolences. I’m sure they would’ve been comforted to know their daughter has carried their legacy onward to better days.”

“One can only hope.” The seat across from him squeaks again, less jovial than its prior enthusiasm. “Is there anything else pertaining to my qualifications you’d like for me to share?”

He quells the temptation to reach for his visor again, and offers a quick shake of his head instead. “No, I believe I’ve gathered quite enough information for Mr. Tostwell to mull over. Your attendance this evening is much appreciated.”

Chair legs scrape across the ground one last time, and her footsteps shift beside the table as she gathers herself to her feet. “Thank you for your consideration. My apologies again for keeping you out so late.”

Silence befalls them, but he doesn’t hear the telltale sound of her departing off into the distance, and it takes him a full second to realize the lull in their exchange is likely due to the fact that she is probably holding out a hand toward him. When he lifts his own hand in the vicinity of her direction, he is mildly embarrassed to feel the sensation of her palm meeting his. “Think nothing of it,” he says. “I’m used to being out at night.”

He notes the firmness of her grip despite delicate fingers; judging by the width of her palm, the strategist estimates her height to be at a little over five feet. Then she is dropping his hand as she strolls past him toward the open marketplace, the scent of Sylleblossom perfume swirling in the air around her wake, and Ignis allows himself a brief moment to indulge in one of the few senses left to him intact.

But her footfalls only make it a half dozen paces before falling quiet. “Mr. Scientia?”

“Please—do call me Ignis.”

“Right. Ignis.” Her footsteps slowly migrate back to where he is seated, until he can feel her warmth emanating beside him. “I feel compelled to thank you for something else.”

He tilts his head toward her and frowns. “And what’s that?”

His ears then pick up on an unusual  _click click_ , until he recognizes it as the sound of fingernails tapping against metal, and that Ophelia must be fiddling with a piece of jewelry on her wrist. “I would just like to acknowledge the sacrifices you’ve made for the kingdom of Lucis. The bravery displayed by you and your brethren has not been quickly forgotten by its people, nor will it ever.”

The problem with being blind, the strategist surmises, is that he was much more prone to unsolicited recollections when his useless eyes had nothing but darkness to focus on; visions of death and destruction suddenly flood his mind, of a battered and bleeding Noctis, of the Hydraean raging and of the last thing he ever saw, and of strands of red hair falling across the face of the only woman he ever loved.

Icy tendrils of grief lick at the insides of his throat, but he clamps down on his anguish before it can reach his voice. “Many have made greater sacrifices.”

“Regardless, fulfilling your duties to the crown and beyond without expectation of reward is an altruism above all measure.”

Ignis’ hand moves to his face again, but it’s not to adjust his visor; rather, the abrupt tightening in his chest is causing the scar that mars his left eye socket to tingle. He scratches at the blemished skin there momentarily as he waits for his discomfort to pass, then slowly rises from his chair and angles himself in the direction of the crowded marketplace. “A future people can look forward to is a reward in itself,” he says, feeling the ground in front of him with the edge of his toe. "I’ll be sure to pass on my findings to Mr. Tostwell and let you know when he’s made a decision about the baker position.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -I know you boil mussels, not shuck them. WHATEVER IT'S LATE IDGAF

As it turns out, the strategist was slightly off in his original estimates; in actuality, Ophelia must have stood at five and a half feet or taller, which he discovered entirely by accident the time he went to reach for a sack of flour he kept stored in the highest cabinet of Mr. Tostwell’s kitchen, only to learn she had already retrieved it for him without even needing the help of a step stool.  

She also had dark features, evidently—“Boring brown eyes, same color as my hair,” she had confessed at one point, after he’d inquired about it in an effort to spark polite conversation while they rolled out a unit of pastry dough together—although it made next to no difference to him, considering he couldn’t make heads or tails out of what he was looking at to begin with. 

She’d been working at the grill for a little over a month now, and had proven herself adept in both culinary skill and matters of hospitality; her father’s secret Baklava recipe alone had made a sizable impact on the establishment’s revenue—the fresh honey harvested from a hive of Killer Bees swarming just south of the city and baked directly into the crust had been quite the hit with the locals—but it was her ability to effortlessly charm the frowns off even the crankiest of customers that had made Mr. Tostwell’s newest hire such a valuable asset.

“Does your wife know you don’t wear your wedding ring while you’re at work?”

The strategist glances up from the mollusks he is shucking and widens his unparalyzed eye. “I beg your pardon?”

He can almost hear the sound of her lips peeling back into a wry grin from the other side of the preparation table. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to presume—husband, perhaps?”

She had turned the same charm she normally reserved for cantankerous patrons on him more than once since being hired; the reserved woman he’d interviewed had given way to a much more vibrant character now that she was truly in her element, dropping cheeky quips around him while her arms were buried to the elbows in pastry dough and making herself readily available whenever he needed her help. And while she’d offered to accompany him on his walks home on days when their schedules happened to coincide—“We’re both headed in the same direction,” was her reasoning, since she apparently lived not two blocks from his apartment complex—he hadn’t been sure whether her inquisitiveness was merely a facet of her affable personality, or a reconnaissance mission into his personal life.

But there was no mistaking her intentions now—one didn’t generally probe into the absence of marital tokens without expecting to elicit a certain response—and Ignis wasn’t particularly interested in encouraging flirtatious behavior. “I’m not married,” he says dryly.

“Really?” The audible  _squish squish_  of dough being kneaded squelches against the countertop. “I must admit, I find that rather surprising.”

The hairs on the back of the his neck tingle in mild annoyance, but he ignores them and returns his attention to the bowl of half-shucked mollusks in front of him. “Why do you say that?” 

“Oh, I don’t know.”  _Squish squish._  “Something about perpetuating the species after an apocalypse comes to mind.”  _Squish squish._  “We can’t very well expect to survive as a civilization with a flock of unmarried bachelors running around.”

“The flaw in your argument is neglecting to account for the female’s contribution to the equation. I’d go so far as to say it’s more crucial for women to secure robust partners, not men.”

“Rather self-important, aren’t we?”

He establishes his grip over a slick mollusk and shrugs. “Hardly. It’s all about ratio—a single man can father over a hundred offspring, circumstances permitting. The same can’t be said for the reverse.”

The squelching of Ophelia’s pastry dough reaches nearly a fever pitch. “Is that how you proposition most women? No wonder you aren’t married.”

But the feigned acrimony in her voice is cut off by the curse he mutters when the wet shellfish he is attempting to pry open escapes his fingertips and clatters onto the floor. “Drat.”

Several employees under Ignis’ supervision had been quick to overcompensate for his fallibilities in the past—eager to convey their empathy toward the blind strategist and stepping annoyingly on his toes in the process—but Ophelia had shown enough mindfulness not to get in his way thus far; in fact, she’d scarcely made any indication of acknowledging his ocular impairment, except only to ask what order he preferred to arrange his paring cutlery when she went to unload the dishwasher for the first time.

“It’s near your left foot,” she says simply.

The strategist drops to his knees and gropes at the floor, his pinky finger finally finding slimy purchase against the wayward arthropod. Before he can toss it into the garbage bin he knows is five paces to his right, however, he hears the sound of her footsteps circling around the preparation table and stopping beside him.

"I wouldn’t normally deign to do your work for you,” she whispers, reaching for his hand and withdrawing the soiled creature from his grasp, “but your favorite customer has just arrived. I can sense his surliness from a mile away.”

The strategist might’ve enjoyed the long-forgotten sensation of a woman’s gentle touch, had Ophelia’s implication not soured the moment. “Surely he’d prefer to be entertained by your charm, rather than stare at my grisly visage. You have the better way with people.”

“Perhaps, but there’s something wholly amusing about watching you squirm.”

His features crumple into a scowl, but he adjusts his visor before grudgingly stepping off down the path he had memorized that led to the grill’s outside seating area.

She isn’t wrong in her observations, exactly; although he couldn’t see worth a damn, it was impossible for the strategist to miss the usual miasma of crotchetiness that seemed to follow Cid Sophiar everywhere like a localized starscourge infection. Eighty years old and more stubborn than a feral Garulessa, Ignis continued to be perplexed as to why the former mechanic had chosen to remain in Lestallum after the daemons had been purged from Lucis, rather than returning to his beloved garage where he could rant at passing tourists from his customary spot in his favorite lawn chair.

“Evening, Cid,” he says, as he halts beside the cloud of wretchedness personified sitting at the table situated nearest the bazaar. “What brings you out on this warm summer night?”

“Same thing that gets me off my ass every night,” the old man replies. “I have a hankering for some shellfish, and you’re the only fella in this town who knows how to clean ‘em out properly. Nothing worse than having to pick sand out of my dentures.”

“I’m not sure I would recommend the Cleigne Darkshells this evening. They proved to be rather squirrelly back in the kitchen, so I’d watch out when taking a bite—lest they try and bite back.”

“I think I can handle a few measly clams by myself. Though Cindy probably wouldn’t mind it too much if they took a piece of my tongue with them, if it meant keeping my mouth shut for a change.”

The strategist hesitates for a brief moment, debating the wisdom of opening up a can of worms by furthering the conversation. “How is Cindy, by the way? It’s been a while since I’ve made the trip out to Leide, and I haven’t heard from her in some time.”

The chair before him squeaks under Cid’s weight, and he can almost envision the white haired mechanic slumping in his seat. “She’s all right, I guess. No doubt getting a little lonely by herself out there in the desert, although your boy Prompto always seems to find an excuse to drop by now and again.”

“Have you given any more though about returning to Hammerhead? Surely she could use the extra set of hands.”

“She don’t need my help. I’m about as worthless as a dead Gaiatoad, at this point. And just as ugly, too.”

His heart aches for the old man, who had once been so instrumental in the destiny of the Crownsguard and the king they served; the strategist had never forgotten the words of encouragement Cid Sophiar had bestowed upon them before their fateful boat ride to Altissia all those years ago— _“Those ain’t your bodyguards, they’re you’re brothers”_  still rang clear as a bell in his mind—nor did he forget what it was like to feel utterly useless to the people around him.

“Come now, Cid,” he says quietly. “I imagine the garage is quite a bit duller without your colorful quips to brighten everyone’s day.”

To his credit, the former mechanic chuckles. “Maybe so. At any rate, I could ask you the same thing—thought you’d be itchin’ to race back to Insomnia the minute dawn broke over Longwythe’s Peak.”

A shiver runs up Ignis’ spine, and his eyebrows furrow behind his frosted visor. “I rather like having an undamaged roof over my head, as it so happens.”

“Crown City ain’t going to rebuilt itself, you know. Who better to lead the charge than one of the last men who lived there?”

Lestallum had remained largely unscathed during the long night, while the other regions of Lucis had commenced reconstruction fairly quickly due to the exodus of refugees eager to return to their former homes. Insomnia, on the other hand, had seen little repair since the rapture; with so few natives left alive after the city’s fall, the strategist estimated it would be several years yet before the province of his youth reached hospitable living conditions again.

“I think I’ll let Gladio and Iris survey the landscape in my stead,” he says, masking his displeasure with a small grin. “Wouldn’t want to risk stubbing my toe on a piece of rubble.”

“I don’t recall hearing anything about sprained ankles after you boys made it back from the Citadel. Or is there something here in Lestallum that’s tying you down?”

He can practically feel the old man’s red and rheumy eyes peering dubiously at him; Ignis’ reticence toward leaving Cleigne had less to do with wanting to remain close to his new life, and  _everything_  to do with preferring to stay away from his old one.

Because, to the strategist, Insomnia represented more than just a city of broken dreams; the miles of cracked pavement and collapsed infrastructure he had tread upon with his own two feet were tangible reminders of the people who had died there, and of the suffering that befell those who were unlucky enough to survive. Ignis himself had nearly succumbed to despair, buried under a mountain of grief when his best friend had fulfilled the Astral’s prophecy and perished alongside the starscourge, and the notion of returning home only to relive his nightmares day in and day out was almost as suffocating as the weight of the skull pendant he still wore pressing hard against his throat.

“I’ll consider my options,” he lies, and pivots back toward the direction of the kitchen. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear the sound of boiling mollusks begging for mercy. Care for an appetizer while you wait?”


	3. Chapter 3

Ophelia doesn’t even ask for permission to accompany him on his walk home this time; she’d scrubbed down the kitchen and taken final inventory while Ignis had stood around twiddling his thumbs as Cid slurped down the last of his darkshells, and she’s already waiting for him at the back alley entrance of the bazaar when he finishes shutting the lights off and locking up the restaurant.

“How long have you known Mr. Sophiar?” she asks, trailing beside him as he steps off onto his usual path back toward his apartment.

He tries not to let his annoyance show, despite wanting nothing more than to be alone and nurse his misgivings in silence. “Over ten years now.”

“So you knew him before the nights grew long?”

“I did.”

“Was he always this cantankerous? I know there’s a certain precedent set for crabby old men, but he seems to have a particularly large chip on his shoulder compared to most.”

“Approximately. Although I do believe he harbors a considerable measure of guilt pertaining to a falling out he had with a close friend some years ago. We all have our daemons in the closet, I suppose.”

“And what, might I inquire, are your daemons?”

Her teasing cadence matches the playful elbow she nudges him with; the strategist clamps down on his jaw and wills his irritation away. “Crustaceans.”

A laugh. “Crustaceans?”

“Indeed. Dreaded creatures—their pointed pincers terrorize me in my dreams. A Karlabos murdered my mother, as it so happens.”

Her giggles ring out through the alleyway, and the sound of musicians hocking their final numbers before packing their instruments for the night drifts in the strategist’s ears. His fingers graze a nearby wall as they round the corner—the one he recalls having been graffitied with  _Dis Town Iz 2 Hot 4 U_  many years prior—and Ophelia’s laughs fade on the evening wind.

“Speaking of jokes,” she says, as they near the front steps leading up to his apartment, “I hope you know I was kidding earlier.”

He reaches for the keys in his pocket and frowns. “About?”

“About not being married. It is rather curious to think someone hasn’t snapped you up by now.”

His frown deepens as he struggles to find his keys. “I’m hardly a piece of fish bait.”

“Sorry—I only meant that there’s quite a bit to your appeal. I’m surprised a handsome man like yourself doesn’t have a harem of beautiful women waiting outside the doors of the restaurant hoping for an autograph.”

“I’m not sure I would categorize myself as handsome. At least, not anymore.”

The strategist can already sense the question hovering on the tip of her tongue. “At the risk of dancing around the obvious,” she says carefully, “I was wondering if I might ask you about your sight.”

The hackles on his neck are up again, but he forces an indifferent air. “There’s not much to say, really. I can’t see anything at all.”

“Then why do you wear that visor of yours?”

“Ah.” He finally manages to withdraw his keys and inserts them into the door. “I suppose ‘anything’ is a fairly broad generalization. My right eye is somewhat sensitive to light, and the visor helps to keep the glare of the sun from irritating it too much.”

“So why do you wear it indoors? I’ve never seen you take it off, not even on rainy days.”

He can no longer conceal the exasperation in his tone, and he turns to face her. “Because I don’t like distressing Mr. Tostwell’s customers. There’s a reason why the lenses are frosted—it saves other people from the bulk of the view.”

If he had expected to frighten her and send her scampering off down the alleyway, he is sorely disappointed. “Don’t be absurd,” she replies, her voice gentle. “Your face isn’t distressing in the least.”

In hindsight, the strategist surmises, Ophelia likely wasn’t aiming to remove his visor against his will, and was only intending to run a few fingers tenderly across his cheek. Even still, she ought to have known better than to reach for a blind man’s face with a hand he couldn’t see coming; he raises his own the instant he feels soft fingertips gliding along his chin, deflecting her wrist as he flinches away.

“Sorry,” she says quickly. “I wasn’t trying to—”

“It’s fine.” He gropes for his visor and readjusts it back across the bridge of his nose. “Although for future reference, I’m not particularly the touchy-feely sort.”

He can hear her dismay as her feet shift on the steps beneath them. “Did I do something wrong?”

_Other than invade my personal space without my consent? Not at all._  The strategist searches for anything to say that might disentangle himself from this delicate predicament without completely deflating her ego; when nothing immediately comes to mind and he’s left grasping at straws, he heaves a sigh and falls back on the oldest excuse in the book. “It’s not you, truly—it’s me.”

His ears then pick up on the sound of her footsteps slowly moving away from the landing. “You know, Ignis,” she says quietly, “you could’ve just told me you weren’t interested, rather than insulting my intelligence. I may not be the cleverest woman in Lucis, but I’m certainly not stupid.”

_Walked right into that one,_  he thinks. “Ophelia, I—”

“Really, it’s all right. I’m a grown woman—I can handle a bit of rejection.”

He props a frustrated hand on his hip, rubbing at his throbbing temple with the other. “Might I persuade you to grab a cup of coffee with me? I think there’s a stand still open near the Coernix Station.”

Her suspicion is obvious even without the use of his eyes. “I thought you just got through patronizing my company.”

“As friends—perhaps get to know each other a little better.” He withdraws his keys from the door and pockets them once again. “Maybe even take a moment to address those pesky closet daemons.”

She remains silent for several heartbeats, until he hears the sound of her footfalls angling away from the steps. “Lead the way.”

His memory of the path leading to the 24-hour convenience store is a little hazier than the one he took to work every morning, but he sets off in a vaguely southwest direction with Ophelia trailing closely behind him. She resumes her morose silence, tiptoeing quietly along the cobblestone sidewalk and never crossing the plane of his forward motion, until the echo of the back alleys gives way to an open pavilion and his occluded eye slowly begins to register the bright lights of the gas station’s neon sign.

The coffee kiosk was actually situated a fair bit away from the Coernix Station, nearer to the wide concrete balcony overlooking the northern end of Taelpar Crag, but close enough to the minimart to capitalize on weary travelers in need of a quick caffeine fix. The strategist generally preferred to brew his own Ebony at home, for reasons that become more apparent as the two approach the stand; he can smell the aroma of underroasted Arabica beans wafting in his nostrils, and his nose wrinkles at the thought of actually having to pay good gil for what amounted to watered-down cat urine.

But it gives him something to keep his hands occupied with, rather than shoving them awkwardly in his pockets while he endures his companion’s loaded silence, and soon they are retrieving their warm paper cups from the kiosk clerk and settling in on a nearby bench.

“You’ve been asking me a lot of questions about myself this evening,” he says, turning his blind gaze in the direction of the valley’s gaping abyss. “Thought maybe you’d consider fielding a few of my own.”

The sound of Ophelia blowing softly on her hot beverage mingles with the stirring of the breeze. “A fair compromise.”

“I’m a little curious to know what exactly happened to your parents, if that’s not too personal an inquiry.”

He then hears her take a slow, deliberate sip of her drink, as if contemplating his words carefully. “Without coming across as calloused,” she says finally, “my father already had one foot in the grave.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’d been fighting an infection for quite some time. Not a starscourge infection, mind you—we probably would’ve been immediately banished from Lestallum if that were the case—but he’d had a history of long illnesses, and it was only getting worse toward the end.”

“Was your mother ill as well?”

“She was not. But she’d heard of an elderly apothecary living in the back hills of Malmalam Thicket who might be able to help him when the doctors here no longer could.” Another sip, another moment of contemplation. “I told her leaving the city posed too great of a risk to their safety, what with all the daemons running about, but she wouldn’t listen. Looking back, I suppose she just couldn’t bear the thought of living life without him. As it turned out, she didn’t have to for very long.”

He grips at the sides of his cup and furrows his brow. “I’m terribly sorry. I imagine that must have left quite the hole in your heart.”

She shifts on the bench beside him, but she doesn’t appear to grow despondent; if anything, the strategist picks up on the slight uptick in her voice. “You would think so, but you’d be surprised. My parents and I never ended a phone call without telling each other we loved one another, and it was the last thing I said to them before they left. At the very least, I haven’t tortured myself into madness by dwelling on sentiments left unspoken.”

Her words cut through him like a dagger between his ribs, and the weight of the skull pendant around his neck suddenly feels as heavy as a boulder. “That’s… very admirable of you.”

“I spent my fair share of time cursing the Six, just as anyone would. But I’ve learned it’s a wasted effort to be ladened down with such remorse, and it’s hardly reasonable of me to cry foul when so many others have lost as much and more.” She then prods him jovially in the shoulder. “I’ve certainly had questionable men leave me with bigger regrets.”

It’s her unbridled earnestness, Ignis realizes, that sets her apart from his former protégé; there was no mystery surrounding Ophelia, no great onus of responsibility that required the complete tempering of all human emotions, and the fact that she was able to remain even remotely positive in the face of such adversity slices through the strategist’s melancholy like a sliver of light through a storm cloud.

“I apologize for my abrasiveness earlier,” he says, swirling his untouched coffee around in his cup. “It seems I’m still nursing a few regrets of my own.”

Rather than acknowledging his admission with a verbal response, Ignis feels her hand reach over and gently squeeze his forearm. His own hands are still wrapped around his cup in a vice grip, and he picks at a rough spot on the waxy rim as a quiet lull descends over the bench.

Then: “What was she like?”

He looks up from his beverage and stares at her for a long moment, although his eyes see nothing but darkness in return. “It’s a funny thing,” he whispers. “I can scarcely remember the sound of her voice, but I’ll never forget the way she used to look at me.”

But it wasn’t only the emerald orbs that had peered past his spectacles and directly into his soul that the strategist recalls to mind, nor was it the fiery red hair that had smelled like lust and restraint and all the delightful things that made her exactly who she was that visits him in his dreams every night; it was her smile he remembers most of all, the one she forfeited when he touched her just where he knew she liked it, when they were behind closed doors after a long day of maintaining rigid facades and could both finally let their guards down, and it was only a small kindness that his precious memories of her had not been purged right along with his sight.

“Was it you who put a stop to things?” Ophelia asks. “Or was she the one who ended the relationship?”

“The latter, more or less.”

“How did she do it?”

“She died.” His voice falters slightly, but he bites down on the inside of his cheek and ignores the painful wincing in his chest. “At least, I presume she did. She was working at the palace when Insomnia fell.”

Ophelia’s side of the bench falls silent for a moment, until he hears the sound of her hair shaking softly against her shoulders. “Was there no evidence of her whereabouts after the invasion? I personally saw hundreds of people fleeing the city before they garrisoned the bridge—is it possible she could’ve escaped in the confusion, somehow?”

“I tried searching for anything that might’ve revealed to me what ultimately happened to her, but the Citadel’s records were all either lost or scattered.” His fingers have resorted to bending the edges of the cup’s rim absentmindedly as he scours his mind for memories he’d long since locked away. “Even Cor Leonis couldn’t tell me very much, and he was her superior officer. Only that she’d been on patrol duty during the peace talks, which was the last time he saw her alive.”

“Did she have any family? Perhaps they might have some leads, if they still walked among the living.”

“Her parents resided in the north, according to her work documents I had access to when I was employed as a royal retainer. She also had a sister living here in Lestallum, although it was unclear whether she had any contact with the family.”

“A sister?”

He nods. “She’d evidently eloped with an Altissian merchant some years back. I could never bring myself to seek her out, though.”

“Why ever not?”

“Because”—he’s gripping the cup so hard now he can feel the paper walls begin to fold in on themselves—“because I never wanted to ask, since I never quite wanted to know the truth of it. She either perished in the fall, or she went out of her way never to look for me.”

Ophelia’s fingers release his forearm, and she runs a hand across his shoulder. “I’m sure if she knew how much you loved her, she would have.”

But her gentle touch isn’t enough to soothe the aching beast inside him, and the tears he’d hoped to stem begin to pool in his one open eye. “It’s hard to say, because I never actually told her so. I thought there’d be time enough later to settle our feelings, when the life we wanted wasn’t quite so at odds with the vows we made to the crown. And now I fear she died never knowing how dearly I loved her.”

“You couldn’t have predicted what was going to happen. Nobody could have.”

It wasn’t so much the lack of foreknowledge, the strategist concedes to himself, that haunted him the most; it was the awful reality of knowing she had almost assuredly been pregnant even before she herself did, because of  _course_  he knew, because it had been his job to notice the little things, because he hadn’t believed for even a millisecond that the nausea and indigestion she’d experienced the last few nights they were together had anything to do with the stress surrounding the peace accord. He’d left for Altissia silently fretting about how to properly handle the situation, hoping only that Noct would eventually come to understand the necessity of him stepping down from his duties as royal advisor so that he might step up and take responsibility for his utterly irresponsible actions.

But it didn’t matter anymore, because both Noctis and the redhead were gone—the latter likely buried under a mass grave he’d unknowingly tread upon the last time he ventured into the city—and Ignis was left with nothing but the weight of a skull pendant around his neck that served only to remind him of the unbearable burden of living.  “Apologies for unloading on you like this,” he says, righting himself in his seat and resuming a firm grip over his emotions once again. “I suppose in the grand scheme of things, she was a drop in the bucket of everything I’ve ever lost.”

Ophelia’s hand falls from his shoulder, and she lets out a long sigh before finally speaking. “Ten years is a long time to carry that weight on your heart, Ignis. Don’t you think it’s time you forgave yourself?”

He rises from the bench and gropes for the balcony’s railing, emptying his cold coffee over the edge and out into the wind. “Truth be told, I wouldn’t even know how to start.”

Her footsteps stop beside him, and her clothes rustle as she leans agains the balustrade. “You could start by seeking closure. All you have to do is ask around—Lestallum’s not that big of a city, and a Lucian woman married to an Altissian merchant certainly narrows the playing field down quite a bit.”

He then feels the sensation of her fingers entwining in his, but there’s no trace of opportunism in her touch; it’s merely another display of the earnestness that has come to define her, and the strategist closes his own hand around her palm as the tightening in his chest suddenly eases a tad.

“I could even assist you, if you’d like.”

Her voice is quiet, her proposal modest and unobtrusive, and Ignis glances down at her for a long time before offering her a weak grin. “That would be… rather helpful, thank you.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> -'Neminis' is the Latin word for 'nobody'; I couldn't quite get around leaving the redhead's sister unnamed, and although 'Neminis' is her married surname, I threw it in there it as a nod to the redhead's anonymity in my previous fics.

It took two weeks of dedicated searching, but the shortlist of women living in Lestallum that matched the criteria of the individual Ignis was hoping to find proved to be mercifully brief. According to the census records and telephone books Ophelia had combed through during her lunch hours, forty-seven Altissian merchants had established permanent residency in Cleigne in the last twenty years, but only a dozen of them had married native-born Lucians; of those twelve couples, five were deceased, four had returned to the island archipelago of Accordo, which left three possible leads to explore.

The first couple the strategist had tried ringing up on the phone ended with him spending almost an hour discussing his Elegant Orange Cake recipe with a very kind but  _very_  hard of hearing old woman, who had evidently mistaken the Date Of Birth line on the most recent census for the last four digits of her citizenship identification number, resulting in a fifty-year discrepancy on her paperwork. He didn’t even bother dialing up the second couple, since Ophelia had pointed out to him that their wedding announcement clipping she’d found in the digital archives of the local newspaper had been dated for only six months prior. The third couple, unfortunately, no longer appeared to have a working landline, but the home address listed for one Mr. and Mrs. Neminis had remained active and unchanged for the last thirteen years.

Which is why it took yet another week for Ignis to drum up enough courage to follow through with the whole dreaded ordeal, because the very last thing he wanted to do was make an unsolicited house call that might've devolved into him sobbing in a puddle of his own snot and tears on the floor of some stranger’s kitchen. It’s only when his coworker-turned-personal psychiatrist jokingly threatens to slip salt into his morning Ebony rather than sugar for each day he chooses to postpone the inevitable that he finally resolves to put an end to his waffling, but strictly under the agreement that she help him navigate the unfamiliar path to house located just beyond where Randolph hammered out his eccentric weapons.

So help him she does, just as she'd helped him come to the grudging conclusion that some closure was better than none, and he listens to the sound of Ophelia scolding children who are playing precariously close to the main thoroughfare as he follows her up the city’s northernmost hillside. She had even gone so far as to cajole Mr. Tostwell with her usual charm into letting them close up the grill early, so that they might make it to their destination before the sun went down that evening; there was never really a  _good_  time to tackle these sorts of things, but Ignis didn’t want to risk dropping an emotional bombshell on Mrs. Neminis in addition to interrupting her supper.

Try as he might to suppress his anxiety, the strategist’s heart is nearly in his throat by the time they reach the front doorsteps of the address in question; he knew this bloody endeavor of his was likelier than not to fail—the odds of the stars aligning and this truly being the immediate relative of his former protégé were mind-bogglingly steep—but the keen intuition that had served him well in the past is causing the hairs on the back of his neck to tingle, and something in his gut is telling him to prepare himself for what lay just beyond the threshold.

Before his trembling fingers can ring the doorbell, however, Ophelia touches her hand to his elbow and speaks in a low voice. “Would you like me to wait outside? I recognize this has the potential to be a rather intimate conversation.”

“That’s not necessary,” he says, masking his unease with a cheeky grin. “Who will help stabilize my severed spine if my knees decided to collapse out from under me?”

He then swallows his reticence and presses the buzzer, listening intently for anything—a clanking pipe, a running faucet, a squeaky floorboard—that might indicate signs of habitation within the home. His heart pounds harder inside his ribcage with each passing second, until his ears prick at the sound of light footsteps padding through the foyer from the other side of the door.

A loud creak follows. “May I help you?”

The strategist’s occluded eye widens as the voice greeting him from inside the doorway slowly registers in his mind; the logical half of his brain understood that similar vocal patterns were relatively common among closely related kin, but the other half nearly short circuits under the strain of not quite comprehending the fact that he wasn’t actually talking to  _her_.

“Are you Mrs. Neminis?” he asks.

“I am.”

He’d rehearsed his side of the conversation more times than was probably necessary—something to the effect of  _‘I do so hate to be a bother, but it has come to my attention that you may be privy to a tidbit of sensitive information I’ve sought after for quite some time now’_  had been rattling around inside his head for several days—but all traces of rationale suddenly escape him, and he blurts out his next words without nary a second thought. “I think knew your sister.”

A long pause. “My sister?”

He can barely hear Mrs. Neminis over the sound of his own pulse screaming in his ears. “I’m not entirely sure if I’ve run into a dead end here, but I have reason to believe you might be related to a young woman who worked as part of a security retinue in Insomnia some years ago.”

Her footsteps shift ominously against the hardwood floor of the landing. “Who are you, exactly?”

He hesitates, until he feels Ophelia’s hand brush against his shoulder. “Go on, Ignis,” she says. “She can’t very well help you without giving her the whole picture.”

“Right.” He clears his throat in an attempt to dislodge the frog that has mysteriously taken up residency there. “I’m a former strategist and advisor to Lucian royal family. I was also employed as a dagger and lance specialist at the Citadel before the crown city fell.”

Nothing but empty silence emanates from the threshold for several agonizing heartbeats; before he can apologize profusely for the unwanted intrusion and make a beeline for the city’s central plaza, however, he hears the sound of the door creaking on its hinges and widening further. “Won’t you two come inside? I think I need to sit down for a moment.”

The strategist’s legs remain frozen in place; he generally disliked entering other peoples’ homes, since he didn’t particularly enjoy the experience of bumbling around unfamiliar layouts like a behemoth in a porcelain wares shop. But his knees finally yield when Ophelia grips him gently by the elbow, and he trails closely behind her as they pass through a series of hallways leading to what he presumes is a living room.

“I’m sorry for dropping in on you like this unexpectedly,” he says as Ophelia guides him to sit in a nearby chair. “I tried calling ahead of time, but it seems your phone number listed in the local directory is no longer working.”

“My husband had it disconnected a few years ago,” Mrs. Neminis replies, her voice so eerily similar to that of her sister’s that it leaves the strategist wondering whether they might have been twins. “It was getting to be prohibitively expensive, what with power at such a premium during the long night.”

“Is your husband also home?” Ophelia asks. “We'd been on the lookout for an Altissian merchant residing in these parts, which is how we found you.”

“Regrettably, no.  _Former_  merchant, I should add—he gave up the trade to focus on ferrying refugees back to Accordo, which is where he’s headed at the moment. If I were to guess, he’s probably floating somewhere near Angelguard right about now.”

The strategist nods solemnly. “An admirable effort, to be sure.”

He then listens as Mrs. Neminis settles into a seat a few feet to his left. “So—my sister,” she begins. “She’d been interested in the pike from a young age, which is why she ultimately made the move to Insomnia. Is that how you came to know her?”

“Correct. She was an early pupil of mine, and show great promise with the halbert. If I recall, she climbed the ranks faster than anyone else in her hiring pool.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Scientia.”

“Scientia,” she echos, her voice suddenly sounding miles away. “You were one of the Crownsguard who served the last king of Lucis. I remember reading about your name in the papers—this country owes you a great deal of gratitude. You have my thanks.”

His cheeks warm slightly, and he wipes a clammy hand on one thigh. “Think nothing of it.”

A lull descends on the three figures sitting in the living room; Ignis ruminates on the thoughts that are clouding his mind, pondering how best to broach the subject of his wayward protégé’s whereabouts, until Mrs. Neminis seemingly recognizes the question hovering on the tip of his tongue and does the difficult work for him.

“I presume you’re not here to tell me you’ve miraculously heard word from her,” she says quietly.

A cascade of numbness washes over him like a rising tide. “I was actually hoping you might have.”

“Hope—such a strange concept, when you really thing about it.” He hears Mrs. Neminis shift against the cushions of her seat, and a long sigh escapes her. “One never quite realizes how much hope they are able to cling to until they’ve gone and lost nearly all of it.”

But then he does begin to feel something, like a scalpel being inserted just under the collarbone with such surgical precision that the pain isn’t obvious until after the sharp blade has already punctured the walls of the heart. “Indeed,” he says, his voice utterly deflated.

“Did you know her very well?”

The strategist narrows his clouded eye, recalling to mind memories of the men and the women he had entangled himself with over the years, before they had all become entirely irrelevant in her shadow. “I did,” he replies softly. “We were quite close at one point.”

“It’s good to hear she had at least one trusted confidant at the Citadel. I know she was feeling rather despondent right after she got there, since our parents had pelted her with guilt for leaving in the first place. I’m sure the only reason they forgave her is because I ran off with a sailor I barely knew and took the heat off of her.”

He snaps out of his reverie long enough to glance up at her. “Are they still alive? Your parents, that is.”

“They’re not, sadly, although they lived longer than anyone probably expected them to. Sometimes I think the only thing that kept them going was the hope that she might walk through their front door one day.” Another shift against the cushions; another long sigh. “I was told a starscourge infection had devastated their town and wiped out all but a few people living there, but the more likely reality was that they simply died of a broken heart.”

Ignis hears his companion stirring on the seat to his right. “I’m terribly sorry,” Ophelia says. “So many have lost so much in the tragedy. My thoughts are with you.”

He then listens as Mrs. Neminis taps her fingers along the arm of her chair absentmindedly. “It’s hardly polite to speak ill of the dead,” she murmurs, “but I often wondered if my parents would’ve held out the same kind of hope for me, had our roles been reversed. My sister was the one with the red hair, but I was more of the surly stepchild, as it were.”

The strategist’s eyebrows furrow behind his visor. “Did you break contact with her after you moved to Lestallum?”

“Not at all. We might’ve had our own petty sibling rivalry, but I was always happy to receive letters from her once she took up office in Crown City. Reading her rant about the neverending stream of arrogant men who tried courting her was always good for a laugh.”

“She was quite the charming talent—everyone who met her was immediately captivated by her.” He allows himself to indulge in a small smile, but his grin quickly fades. “The world is undoubtably a little dimmer without her in it.”

Mrs. Neminis’ fingers have evidently moved on from their tapping, and Ignis picks up on the sound of her plucking at a loose cushion thread. “You know, between you and me, I think she was always destined to die young. A flame that burns twice as hot only burns half as long, as they say.”

“She… certainly left her mark on those closest to her.”

“I mean, really—can you imagine what she would’ve been like at twenty-five, or even thirty? She would’ve made a terrible mother, if she’d carried an infant around even half as roughly as she did her beloved pike.”

The imaginary scalpel in his heart twists further still. “I’m not so sure about that. She could be rather accommodating when called upon, at least in my experience with her.”

“Would you happen to have any personal anecdotes of her you’d be willing to share? After all, there’s no better way of honoring the dead than by keeping their memory alive.”

His hand moves to his visor, if only to mask the sudden dampness plaguing his eyelids. “Well,” he says, “she was smart as a whip, and a quick learner. She managed to pry my spectacles clean off my face once using nothing but her lance and a well-placed foot to the hilt.”

Mrs. Neminis laughs beside him. “That sounds like something she would’ve done. I know she had used her steel-toed boots to ward off more than one overly ambitious suitor in the past.”

“This was back when my eyesight was only marginally better than it is now, mind you, so I probably shouldn’t be giving her too much credit.”

Her chuckles continue for several moments before eventually fading into silence. “Thank you for that. It truly warms my heart to know she was remember so fondly.”

“I can only hope she was happy. In the end, at least.”

But the somberness in his tone doesn’t quite match the cadence of Mrs. Neminis’. “I don’t see why she wasn’t,” she replies merrily. “The last letter I received was her droning on and on about a man she had apparently fallen head over heels for, although she refused to tell me his name no matter how hard I pressed her.”

The wincing in his heart eases a tad, and a weak smile touches his lips. “You don’t say? How curious.”

“You know how silly young women can be—they positively love their secrets. Although I suppose if one has to meet the Draconian prematurely, taking their leave on a high note is the way to go.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

Silence befalls the living room once more, and Ignis rakes a hand through his hair as he heaves a sigh. He then hears the sound of Mrs. Neminis leaning forward in her seat, followed by the sensation of her fingers pressing gently against his forearm.

“I know this wasn’t the outcome you were hoping for,” she says. “I’m left with quite a few unanswered prayers of my own.”

He covers her hand with his own and offers her a placid expression. “It’s all right. I’ve certainly unearthed more than I was realistically expecting to find.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“I just—”

His voice wavers, but for once in his life, the strategist doesn’t shy away from his own vulnerability, or attempt to hide his despair behind an aloof facade. “I just want to let it be said that she was dearly loved by those she chose to share herself with. As long as there’s someone out there who knows that, it’s enough.”

* * *

“I have a confession to make.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t particularly care for the taste of coffee.”

The strategist frowns. “Then why on Eos are we paying good money to sit here and choke down bitter Coeurl excrement?”

Ophelia’s melodious laughs ring out beside him. “Because it’s not polite to look a gift Chocobo in the mouth, especially when you’re the one who offered to buy.”

They were, in fact, sitting on a bench overlooking Taelpar Crag just a few hundred paces away from the Coernix Station; not wanting to stay in Mrs. Neminis’ hair for too long, and not wanting to immediately bolt home to wallow in pity, Ignis had proposed stopping by the same coffee kiosk as before to grab a quick cup in an effort to take his mind off what had transpired inside the house on the hill.

Her giggles subside and she resumes a measured tone. “I hope you don’t feel like I coerced you into doing anything you didn’t want to do. I know this was rather difficult for you.”

He can feel the chain of his necklace encircling his throat, but it no longer threatens to strangle him like a hangman’s noose; rather, the skull pendant seems almost to have increased in lightness, the weight of the pewter pressing against his collarbone more comforting and less suffocating than before.

“On the contrary,” he says. “It’s something I should’ve done of my own volition a long time ago. You were simply the spur I needed to get on with it.”

“Are you going to be all right? You don’t have to lie just to put my mind at ease.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage somehow.” He reaches out a hand and pats what he hopes is her knee. “Thank you for the kindness you’ve shown toward me. You do quite the honor to your namesake.”

“My namesake?”

“Ophelia—it means ‘to help’, does it not?”

“Oh. Right.” He hears her lean back against the bench, the scuffling of her feet echoing against the concrete balcony as she rests one knee over the other. “I’m happy I was able to be of service, if only just a little. Perhaps I’ll find a way to apply that helpfulness to my own life one of these days.”

His features furrow into puzzlement. “Are you in need of help yourself?”

She grows silent for a time, and it’s only when he begins to wonder whether he’d made himself audible enough that she stirs beside him again. “It just feels like something’s missing—I thought quitting my job at the power plant to become a baker would’ve been enough to make me happy, but I’m not feeling as fulfilled as I would’ve hoped. Like I traded the risk of radiation exposure for yet another contamination, by way of flour.”

“Work is generally a means to an end, at least for most people. Do you have any friends to keep you occupied?”

“I do, but they’ve all started families and moved on with their lives. Meanwhile, I’m stuck in the same rut I was in when my parents died, and it’s left me feeling rather alone.” His ears prick as she turns in her seat to face him. “Have you ever worried what it would be like to reach the end of you life, only to realize you never shared it with anyone else?”

“Truth be told, I didn’t even think I was going to make it this far.” He grimaces as he stares blankly into his coffee, then empties the stale liquid off the end of the bench before crumpling the paper cup into a waxy ball. “But I gave up hope a long time ago that I might meet someone who’d be charitable enough to embrace the complications of being with me. Seems rather unfair to subject a partner to a lifetime of my disability, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d say that’s not really your decision to make for other people.”

“Come now, no one would willingly put up with my idiosyncrasies. The prospect of having to herd me around like a senile cat alone would make them want to positively tear their hair out.”

“I would.”

He looks over at Ophelia then, straining desperately to make out any recognizable glimpse of human features. But not even the aura of calmness and tranquility he can sense emanating from her is enough to agitate the damaged nerves in his right eye, so he resorts to doing exactly the same thing he’d admonished her for weeks prior and inches a little closer to her side of the bench.

“At the risk of coming across as a lecher,” he says carefully, “may I touch your face?”

The strategist might not have known what she looked like, but the grin in her voice is unmissable. “What happened to not being the touchy-feely sort?”

“Be that as it may, this is the only way I can ‘see’ anyone, so to speak.”

Rather than responding with a wry quip like he expects, he feels her hand reach over and draw his own from his lap, and soon the sensation of velvety soft skin registers in his mind as she presses his palm to her cheek. His fingertips trace the outline of her jaw before moving across the bridge of her nose; the bone there is both at once delicate and strong, and as his fingers glide up toward her forehead, he can make out the distinct furrow of a worry line centered just between her eyebrows.

He then drops his hand and offers her a small smile. “I can tell you’re quite beautiful. No wonder Cid always asks for you by name.”

But her own hand is still grasping lightly at his forearm, and she is close enough to his side that he can feel her warm breath on the exposed skin of his neck. “Would you consider letting me return the favor?” she asks. “I promise not to knock your visor askew this time.”

He snorts softly, but an inkling of anxiety trickles into his gut; he’d never been on the receiving end of a woman’s touch in public before, not even once, not even when he had said goodbye to the redhead for the very last time, even though all he had wanted to do was shout her name from the rooftop of the Citadel and carry her across the threshold of the home they would never have together.

But Ignis is no longer the man he used to be, back when appearances were everything and consummate professionalism was more important than telling the woman he loved how much she truly meant to him, and he wasn’t about to let himself make the same foolish mistakes of his youth. “Go on, then,” he says quietly.

Her hand meets his bare face, tentatively at first, then more deliberately as he yields to her touch. He can smell her Sylleblossom perfume mingling with the aroma of coffee that must have dribbled over the side of her cup while she was holding it, and his mouth parts slightly when her fingers graze the vertical scar that splits his lower lip. And although the strategist doesn’t quite understand it, she somehow feels like honesty and virtue and pure kindness all rolled into the palm of one gentle hand, and his eyelids flutter shut as her hair stirs in the breeze around them and tickles his cheek.

Then a whole new sensation registers at the back of Ignis’ mind, and an explosion of invisible fireworks goes off behind his blind eyes when he feels her lips brush softly against his own.


	5. Chapter 5

“Tell me more about that Karlabos.” 

“Hm?” 

“You know—the one that supposedly murdered your mother. Did you ever manage to take your revenge?”

“Ah.” A smile touches the strategist’s lips as they round the usual corner of the alleyway leading back to his apartment. “As a matter of fact, I did.”

“Well? Don’t leave me in suspense.”

Ophelia’s fingers find his and she squeezes his hand teasingly. “My friends and I confronted the colossal beast on a shore overlooking Cape Caem some years ago,” he says. “We’d been sent on a quest to dispose of a Dread Behemoth that had been terrorizing the locals, and there he was—hiding like a coward behind his fellow monstrosity and taunting me with those beady black eyes of his.”

“Did he give you any trouble?”

“Not nearly as much as the prince did. Noct evidently had worse eyesight than me, because I couldn’t take two steps without having my feet frozen to the ground, no thanks to his poorly aimed Blizzaga spells.”

“I presume you were victorious, seeing as how you’re still alive to tell the tale.”

“Indeed. Can’t say it was worth the effort, though—we couldn’t even enjoy a nice lobster meal afterward, since whatever the creature had gained it size, it had seemingly lost in flavor.”

His heart skips a wayward beat when her fingers slip from his hand and move to rest at the small of his back. “I saw a Karlabos, once,” she says, her voice thoughtful. “At the monster arena in Altissia. What was that place called?”

“Totomostro—also known as the gambling addiction I never knew I had. And before you ask, I’d rather not talk about it.”

Her laughs are carried by the breeze as they halt at the front steps of his apartment. “It’s likely your own fault for losing money. You should know you're always supposed to bet on the Spiny Speedsters.”

“An error in judgment, to be sure,” he says, as her arms slowly encircle his waist. “Maybe my luck will start to look up from here on out.”

“I’d say it already has.”

He then feels her soft lips brush against his, just as he had felt them touching his own every night after work for the last three weeks; it was getting easier for him to show his affection for her in public, the anxiety of being spotted by perfect strangers growing less and less insistent with each passing day, and the weight of the pendant against his neck hadn’t bothered him in quite some time.

It’s a chaste kiss, nothing terribly overt or ambitious, and it’s over nearly as quickly as it had begun. But he can’t fully bring himself to let go of her this time, not tonight, not like he could before, because the warmth of her body beneath her cardigan pressing against his chest was as addicting as the lure of ten-to-one Totomostro odds, and Ignis had almost forgotten what it was like not to feel so completely and utterly  _alone._

“Would you care to come inside for a moment?” he asks, scrambling for any excuse that would stay her departure for even one minute more. “I wouldn’t dream of forcing a cup of Ebony on you, but I did make some pastries the other day that could use a proper taste test.”

“I’ll pass on the coffee,” she demurs, “but I suppose I am a bit curious to see how well your baking skills stack up to mine.”

So she drops her hands from his waist, and the strategist’s heart cries out only a little at the travesty before he returns his attention to fishing his keys from his pocket. When he’s managed to finally open the stubborn door— _‘stubborn’_  in the sense that it wouldn’t open under its own free will when his nervous fingers couldn’t seem to find the correct key—he climbs the narrow stairwell leading to the unit two floors up, Ophelia’s footfalls echoing lightly behind him.

Another ‘stubborn’ door later, and he is stepping into the foyer of his apartment and showing her in. The strategist had never actually seen what the inside of his own home looked like, but he’d signed the lease solely based on the layout; the custom built cabinetry was spacious enough to accommodate his extensive collection of cooking utensils, and the open design of the kitchen flowing into the living area helped him to avoid walking headfirst into any unnecessary walls.

He flips a light switch and hangs his keys on a hook he knows is eye-level and exactly eighteen inches to the right of the front door, listening intently as Ophelia strolls into the space. “This is nice,” she says. “Quite comfortable, all things considered.”

He then moves into the kitchen, frowning slightly as he reaches for a clean plate. “All things considered?”

“One generally doesn’t list ‘bright neon lights encroaching on the living room’ as a must-have when apartment hunting.”

Ignis had almost forgotten about the supposed view from his flat; he’d saved a fortune by renting out this particular unit rather than a west-facing one, since his landlord had struggled to find potential tenants who would be unbothered by the bright _EXINERIS Industries_ sign that glowed annoyingly just beyond his easternmost window. “One of the few perks of being blind,” he comments. “It also helps to save money on electrical, since I don’t even have to use the overhead lights when I’m home alone.”

“I was wondering if I might ask you about that.” A gentle creak echoes from the living room as she makes herself comfortable on a leather sofa. “How long precisely did it take you to regain your mobility after you lost your sight? I’ve seen you prepare complex dishes that someone with four working eyes and six arms couldn’t even manage.”

He retrieves a set of tongs hanging above the sink and opens the refrigerator door. “A couple of years, I suppose. Never underestimate the power of a strategist with an obstinate streak.”

“That’s what they call you, right? I’ve seen it in the newspapers— _‘Ignis Scientia, also known as The Strategist’_.”

“That’s what they  _used_  to call me. About the only strategies I work out nowadays is how best to satisfy Cid’s sweet tooth without having to go out and harvest Ulwaat berries myself.” He selects a pastry off the upper shelf of the fridge, then strides into the living room and stops at the sofa. “Speaking of, give this a try.”

“What is it?”

“Memory Lane Pastry—a Tenebraen specialty.”

The plate in his hand disappears. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard of it.”

“They were a favorite of the prince’s when he was recuperating there as a child,” he says, as he lowers himself onto the couch beside her. “I never could get the recipe quite to his liking, but he’s not exactly around to complain about it any longer.”

Either he is unable to entirely conceal the hint of sadness in his voice, or she is more perceptive than he initially gave her credit for; he hears her shift closer to him on the couch, followed by the sensation of her hand squeezing his knee. “I imagine you must miss him a great deal, considering the sacrifices you made for him.”

It was a different kind of pain, losing Noct; as he rests his arm along the back of the sofa, and his lips press together into a thin line, he concedes to himself that honor of serving the last king of Lucis in his final hours far outweighed the burden of sorrow he still carried on his shoulders. “I’ll spare you the grisly details of the time he drove the Regalia off the top of the Duscaean arches,” he says. “Go on—have a bite.”

She must have sensed his desire not to be bogged down by old memories, because she doesn’t press him for details, and instead removes her hand from his leg to focus on the dessert on her plate. It’s only when he hears her nibbling at the soft crust that he realizes he’d forgotten to set out some napkins; as he ruminates over the most polite and gentlemanly way of offering to lick any wayward crumbs off her lips with his tongue, his ears pick up on an audible gasp beside him.

“Are they to your liking?” he asks. “Or should I just set the contents of my kitchen on fire altogether?”

“These are  _delightful_ ,” she breathes. “How on Eos have you been hiding these from me all this time?”

“They’re not particularly common in Lucis, although I did happen to learn my recipe from an establishment in Galdin Quay. Ulwaat berries inarguably make a superior filling, but they’re fairly hard to import unless you know exactly which merchant to talk to.”

He then hears her set the empty plate aside. “Really, Ignis—have you considered selling these for Mr. Tostwell? They’d certainly give my father’s Baklava pastry a run for its money.”

“I’m not really the competitive sort.” His nose wrinkles, and he pushes back on the lenses of his visor. “Besides, there’s something about capitalizing on nostalgia that doesn’t quite sit right with me. I suppose I’m getting a touch sentimental in my old age.”

“Come now, don’t be obtuse. You’re hardly  _old_.”

“Maybe not, but these scars aren’t doing my features any favors.”

He suddenly feels her fingertips tracing over the lesion nestled above his right eyebrow. “I like your scars,” she says quietly. “More like marks of distinction, in service to the greater good.”

His spine begins to tingle under her gentle touch. “You are perhaps the only one who finds any measure of value in them.”

“Perhaps,” she echoes.

Her fingers then move to the bridge of his nose, pausing over the small scar there before drifting down his cheek. His mouth opens slightly when she glides a thumb across it; before he can sample the flavor of any powdered sugar still clinging to her skin, however, she removes her digit and replaces it with her soft lips.

He needn’t have worried about the sugar, he surmises, because she tastes like Ulwaat Berries and pastry crust and all the things that made her so delightfully sweet. His hand moves from its resting spot on the back of the sofa to sift through her hair and draw her in close, and he’s rewarded with the sensation of her tongue chasing after his. As the scent of her Sylleblossom perfume swirls in his nostrils and muddles his senses, the strategist yields to her playful probing and fronts his own sensual assault.

They’ve kissed before, but it was never like this; something about it was different, something wholly electrifying, and the nerve endings in his brain are firing impulses at light speed. He feels her palm slip under the collar of his dress shirt and caress the crook of his neck, but before he can reach up and entwine his fingers in hers, she ensnares his wrist and drags his hand down toward her thigh.

But a gentle leg caress evidently wasn’t what she was aiming for, because she doesn’t let go of his arm until she’s guided his hand several inches past the hem of her dress; an inkling of doubt worries away at the back of Ignis’ mind, and he withdraws from her slightly as he breaks their kiss.

The confusion in her voice is obvious. “Is this all right?”

He then retrieves his fingers from the edge of her undergarment and frowns. “Yes, of course.”

“So then, how long are you going to play the consummate gentlemen before you allow me to lead you into the bedroom?”

Her hand is still locked around his wrist; when she makes no move to release him, he gives up trying to extricate himself from her clutches and settles for resting it awkwardly on her knee. “I… don’t want you to think that's why I invited you up here this evening.”

“I’m the one who’s offering, aren’t I?”

“Er—right.”

“Am I being too forward?”

She finally lets go of his arm, and he lets out a defeated sigh. “It’s not that. It’s just been a rather long time since I’ve been this intimate with anyone.”

“That makes no difference to me.”

“That’s kind of you to say, but, well—ah, you see—”

Scarcely anything was shameful enough to ruffle the strategist’s feathers and leave him at a total loss for words, but the matter of his own deficiencies was admittedly a source of embarrassment. “There is some lingering damage from the trauma I’ve sustained,” he says finally, pushing back on his visor again. “I couldn’t even tell you if the parts still worked properly.”

His remark isn’t  _precisely_  accurate, although there had been long stretches of years where Ignis had been unable to achieve anything remotely approaching rigidity between his legs. Just when he had begun to believe his impotence was yet another permanent reminder of the physical sacrifices he had made, however, he’d occasionally wake up in the middle of the night with an erection so painful and acute that the only source of relief he’d been able to find was by submerging himself in an icy cold shower and rubbing one out several times over. And while it had mercifully been several months since his last miserable episode, his body’s natural functions had proven to be more than a little erratic, to say the least.

Ophelia returns her hand to his arm, but it’s not to restrain him against his will, and instead she runs it gently across his shoulder. “There’s only one way to find out.”

He gnaws at the inside of his cheek and hesitates. “I would hate to leave you feeling disappointed, is all.”

“Ignis, you couldn’t disappoint me if you tried.” She then captures his face in her small hands, lowering her voice as she brushes her lips against his ear. “Now, are you going to follow me into your bedroom like a proper gentleman, or do I have to throw you over my shoulder and carry you in there myself?”

He feigns a smile, but doesn’t immediately stand up when he feels her rise from the sofa—partly because he hadn’t expected for things to move so quickly and he wasn’t sure whether he was prepared to bare his broken body to her fully just yet, but mostly because he didn’t want to draw attention to the obvious tenting in his trousers—and it’s only when she begins to tug gently on his wrist that he swallows his reticence and gathers himself to his feet.

But she doesn’t promptly tackle the buttons of his shirt the instant they step foot into the bedroom, nor does she launch herself at him like a rabid Voretooth as her insinuation might’ve suggested; if anything, she seems entirely unhurried in her plot to assess his virility, and simply asks him to remove his shoes while she briefly excuses herself from the room.

“I’m going to freshen up a tad,” she says. “I’ll be just a moment.”

And then she’s gone, and he’s left with nothing but bare feet and a testy groin to distract him from the fears that are currently plaguing his thoughts. Leaping out a window seemed like a disproportionate response to an unusual dilemma, but he can feel the bulging in his pants already starting to soften; when the silence in the bedroom grows increasingly deafening in his ears, and he’s spent five whole minutes calculating the odds of surviving a fall from the nearest fire escape, his mind slowly begins to registers the smell of newly applied Sylleblossom perfume.

He then feels her hands snake around his waist from behind, and when he turns to face her, he discovers she’s removed the cardigan she was wearing earlier; the skin on her arms is soft and velvety smooth, the scent of her floral fragrance both mild on his delicate senses and wholly seductive to the primal part of his brain, and his reservations ebb somewhat when he traces his fingers along her shoulders and collarbone.

But a flicker of panic returns when her own fingers move to his face and touch the sides of his visor, and he seizes her wrists before she is able to fully remove it. “You may want to consider turning out the lights first,” he says. “For your own benefit—I wouldn’t want you to have to stare at my bare face all night.”

“I look forward to staring at your bare face all night,” she teases, brushing his hands aside. “In fact, I’m counting on it.”

There was a deep-seeded insecurity buried somewhere in the depths of the strategist’s psyche, the origins of which could be traced back to long before he had ever lost his sight. Corrective lenses or frosted visor, the absence of the comforting weight across the bridge of his nose made him feel altogether more naked and vulnerable than even the worst torture he had endured during the Hydraean catastrophe. So when Ophelia does finally remove his visor, and he hears the sound of her setting it carefully on the nightstand behind him, Ignis is unable to entirely quell the distress poisoning his insides; he remains paralyzed in place when she caresses his disfigured left eyelid, and it’s only after her hands finally fall from his face that he lets out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

But one anxiety is quickly replaced by another as she fingers the top button of his shirt. “There’s something you ought to know,” he whispers, grasping her by the wrists again to slow her progress. “My injuries, they—well, they’re not limited to my face.”

The strategist is beginning to think she is either braver than Bahamut or more reckless than the Infernian, because her only response to his warning is to touch her lips lightly to his mouth before resuming her efforts. His heart beats hard against his ribcage with each inch of his torso she exposes to air, until there’s nothing left for him to hide behind and she’s pushing his shirt down around his elbows.

She then runs a hand tentatively across the gruesome laceration that bisects him from shoulder to navel. “Does it hurt?” she asks.

He shakes his head wordlessly, and at the back of his mind he wonders how on Eos she is able to stomach the view as he feels her rake her teeth across his pectorals. He doesn’t have time to ponder the enigma for very long, however, because her mouth soon drifts to his right nipple, and the tongue she is circling it with is working wonders to distract him from his own self loathing. He briefly considers staging one last protest—his occluded eye is sensitive enough to note she had  _not_  turned the bedroom lights off when she went to remove his visor—but he abandons all argument when her hands drop to the waistband of his trousers.

She hadn’t show the slightest hint of doubt in her resolve until now, and it’s only when several moments pass without hearing the audible  _whir_  of his zipper being released that he notices her struggling with the notches of his belt. “Sorry,” she laughs. “It seems you aren’t the only one who’s been through a bit of a dry spell as of late.”

The tension in his chest eases a tad and he offers a her small smile, running his fingertips lightly along her arms until goosebumps appear on the skin there. When she finally manages to discard the stubborn piece of equipment, he feels her grip him gently by the forearm to steady him; he acknowledges her silent signal and steps out of his trousers, kicking them far enough away so as not to be a walking hazard on the path toward the bed.

For a moment, he isn’t quite sure what to do with himself; the mental picture he conjures of standing blind and nearly naked before her doesn’t exactly recall to mind the dignity and decorum of his former self. But she offers up her own answer to his conundrum by wrapping her arms around his waist and leaning into his embrace, and his cheeks warm slightly when he feels her hips pressing against the fabric of his briefs. The tightening there has resumed its arbitrary behavior and is now standing at embarrassingly full attention, but she doesn’t appear to care—the hands gliding down his buttocks being her only outward reaction to his uncontrollable prodding—so he simply enjoys the sensation of her small figure nestled comfortably against his torso before reaching around her back to finger the zipper of her dress.

It hadn’t felt like all that long ago when  _he_  was the one quieting the trembling hands of a nervous lover; the strategist of old had always been in control, his nerves seemingly tempered in steel, and there was a period in his life when he would've rather been publicly flogged than ever be caught dead showing the slightest sign of weakness. But Ignis Scientia isn’t the same man he was before, and its his own hands that are trembling now, and he bites back a curse as he fights with the leading hook that evidently required the use of an electron microscope to unfasten.

But then he does finally manage to unfasten it, and relief washes over him when the zipper mercifully comes undone without further issue. Ophelia steps away long enough for him to hear the sound of her dress pooling to the floor; he had tried never to get into the habit of resenting his circumstances, but he can’t quite help the bitterness he feels at being denied the rapture of gazing upon her figure with his own two eyes.

But he still has two hands, and she is seemingly well aware of this fact as well, because she guides him to sit on the edge of the bed before grasping his palms and placing them on either side of her waist. He flexes his fingers tentatively, only allowing them to make contact with parts that weren’t explicitly covered up by her undergarments—he finds the flesh of her belly is as delicate as silk and twice as smooth, while the taut muscles of her back ripple and yield as he draws his fingernails lightly down her spine—and he takes the opportunity to nuzzle his nose against the softest part of her neck when she moves to settle herself in his lap.

The wetness he can feel even even through her undergarment is positively tortuous against aching groin, but old habits die hard, and he chokes back the growl threatening to claw its way up his throat. He had always been a quiet lover, because he’d always preferred listening to melody of his partners’ ecstasy over the sound of his own ardor, and it was even more critical to him now that he relied so heavily on his hearing; as he grips her buttocks and angles his hips against her heat, he is rewarded with exactly the moan he was hoping to elicit from her.

So he allows her vocalizations to feed his inquisitiveness and finally lets his idle hands wander, teasing his fingers under the straps of her brassiere while his other hand circles around her torso to tackle the clasp at her back. His grip is steadier now, a little of his former confidence returning each time she presses her lips hungrily to his, and he feels her nails dig into the thickest part of his shoulders when he liberates her from the constricting garment; a moment later, and she’s arching her neck against his open mouth and drawing his hands to her chest to make her insistence known.

As much as he would’ve liked nothing more than to ravage her nipples with his tongue, however, her hips bucking hard against his erection is distracting him from the effort, so he shifts his weight and guides her to lay down on the bed beside him. A frustrated whine escapes her at not having her immediate desires fulfilled, but it’s soon replaced by a whispered gasp when he settles in between her legs and draws his teeth across her belly. His fingers slip under the waistband of the lace separating him from the last of her nakedness, but he doesn’t immediately tear them off in a fit of lust; stoking the flames of passion took time and patience, and although the strategist might’ve been a little out of practice, he had never forgotten the fundamentals of his basic training.

He can’t resist indulging in a smile when he feels her writhing beneath him, and he opens himself fully to the sensations his four other senses are currently experiencing all at once. The scent of her perfume swirls in the air around his nostrils each time he glides a hand across her breasts, his fingertips lingering at her nipples and pinching them lightly until they've grow hard against his unyielding touch, while her soft moans reverberate like an aria in his ears. It’s the way she tastes, however, that perhaps ignites his libido the most; the delectable flavor of her skin is a borderline aphrodisiac, and the hardening between his legs strengthens with every inch he comes to closer to stripping her of her panties.

But if he thought she’d immediately wrap her thighs around his neck like angry Malboro tentacles the instant he freed her from her underwear, he is sorely mistaken. “Ignis,” she says hoarsely, as he draws the lacy accoutrement down around her ankles. “Consider trading places with me for a moment. This was my idea, after all.”

He brushes his lips against the inside of her thighs before drawing them over each of his shoulders. “You wouldn’t deny a starving man a few bread crumbs, now would you?”

His desire to please her has less to do with wanting to oversee the direction of their activities, and more to do with logistics; the evening wouldn’t be a completely wasted effort if he could at the very least bring her to climax, in the likely event that his body eventually betrayed him. It helped that the single greatest joy the strategist generally took in life was the sampling of new, unexplored flavors, and he doesn’t waste any time burying his maimed face into the warmth of her flesh.

Every partner tasted a little different, but no more or less decadent than any other, and one of the perks of having a palate as sophisticated as his own was being able to distinguish the subtle nuances between each one. He feels her legs relax around his shoulders as he nuzzles her sensitive hood, and his mind picks apart the fragrances of her natural odors and Sylleblossom perfume much like he would if he were nosing a glass of fine wine. She flinches slightly when he presses a rough tongue against her folds, but he doesn’t yield or shy away; he probes onward instead, allowing her soft gasps to entice his exploration further.

Even if his better days were behind him, the strategist was always a man with a plan, and tonight is no different; as he settles into a measured pace with his tongue, and he feels her thighs finally begin to tighten around his shoulders, he moves to wrap a hand around the back of her knee; the artery there is close enough to the surface of the skin to detect the slightest fluctuations in her rising pulse—the human body surrendered all the knowledge a lover could possibly require in order activate a pleasurable release, if one were shrewd enough to know just how to decipher its secrets—and he slips his other hand between her legs and presses a finger inside of her, alternating the pressure on her nub between his thumb and his mouth.

His dedication to maintaining a methodical cadence quickly begins to yield positive results; he can hear her breath shortening in her lungs, the whimpers escaping her lips wavering in volume depending on the pressure he is bringing to bear against her hood. It may have been eons since his last intimate encounter with anyone, but the muscle memory is still there, and as she rakes her fingers through his tawny hair, he can feel her walls trembling with each of his deft caresses. He focuses most of his efforts on employing his tongue, but he can’t resist the urge to nibble gently at her hardening nub, and it takes all of his willpower not to ravage it altogether every time her gasps echo in his ears.

At the back of his mind, though, he knows he’s losing himself in the moment; he’d be of better service to her if he could rein himself in and extend her ecstasy for just a little longer, but the stalwart discipline that had defined the strategist in years past is in direct conflict with his selfish desire to hear his own name on her lips. Which is exactly what is on them right now, because his mouth is pressed hard against her sex, his tongue lashing back and forth against her quivering hood, and his fingers are buried to the knuckle in her warm and dripping fluids. The sharp tug of his hair being yanked on and the vice grip her legs now have over his neck seem only to heighten the fervor that is overtaking his senses, and he casts aside the last of his restraint in his unwavering mission to push her over the final edge.

“Ignis,” she whispers, her fingers nearly tearing his hair out. “Please, I—”

There was something wholly otherworldly about bringing a woman to orgasm; the way Ophelia’s body writhes beneath his touch without rhyme or reason and entirely of its own accord was a curious sight for any man to behold. But Ignis doesn’t immediately cease his ministrations the instant he feels her walls clench tightly around his fingers, and instead keeps his tongue pressed firmly against her nub as he carries her through each wave of her climax, until he feels the tension in his scalp and around his neck suddenly ease and her body grows still on the bed.

Only then does he grudgingly pry himself away from her warmth, running a cheek tenderly against her thigh before moving to rest beside her on the comforter. He feels her arms snake around his neck and draw him in close, and the only sound that can be heard for a long moment is her labored exhales and her heartbeat resuming a more measured pace inside her chest.

He then feels a finger brush the lock of hair that falls across his forehead. “If you ask me,” she says quietly, “I wouldn’t have said you were out of practice in the least.”

He smiles softly and runs a hand along her bare arm. “This retired strategist still has a few methods left at his disposal.”

“Care to let me show you some of my own methods?”

“Hm, maybe not. It’s getting rather late, and I’m feeling a bit tired.”

It’s a lie, and he knows it’s a lie, and he also knows that  _she_  knows it’s a lie; she guides him to roll over onto his back before pressing an open palm against the flesh that is still—mercifully—rigid between his legs. “Then perhaps you’d agree to lie back and let me do a bit of the legwork.”

She somehow manages to push his briefs down around his ankles before he even has time to object. “Really, Ophelia—it’s fine. You know how irritable Mr. Tostwell gets when any of his employees are late for wor—”

But his words are cut off by the sharp hiss that escapes his lungs when he feels the sensation of her tongue slowly circling the head of his shaft. It had been an eternity and a day since he’d exposed his manhood to anything other than ice water or his own calloused hand, and he bites down on the inside of his cheek so hard and so suddenly he can taste blood.

If he thought that would be the extent of her delightful torture, however, he quickly begins to realize the worst is yet to come; she was merely priming his equipment, evidently, because her mouth lingers on his aching cock only long enough to deposit a copious amount of saliva there before she is straddling his waist like an armored paladin and guiding him inside of her with a gentle hand.

The flavor of blood intensifies on his tongue as he bites down on the urge to scream; his eyes roll back against his closed eyelids and he arches himself against her heat, a warmth that is at once both comfortable and inviting yet so searingly hot it feels like he is quenching his flesh-and-blood sword in a vat of boiling liquid. His breath escapes him and he gasps for air, and it’s only when she presses a palm to his forehead that he is able to regain control over his senses—but only just a little, because she’s already beginning to rock her hips, and it takes everything in his power not to immediately fire his empty rounds inside of her right then and there. He gropes for her arms in an attempt to curtail her momentum—she isn’t even moving that fast, he concedes, but anything quicker than a snail’s pace would almost assuredly bring an abrupt and embarrassing end to the evening—and she responds to his flailing by leaning over his chest and pressing her mouth hard against his.

His fingers sift through her hair, and for a moment he forgets altogether that he is blind and broken and a bitter husk of his old self, because he can  _see_  her, somehow; maybe not with his eyes, but in his mind he can envision the lithe body that fits together with his like pieces of a puzzle, can hear the smile in her voice when she moans aloud, can feel the warmth and kindness emanating from every cell and fiber of her being, and Ignis doesn’t need the use of his sight to recognize it was undoubtedly the work of the Six that set her path on a collision course with his.

Heartwarming as the sentiments may be, however, they’re little help in the fight against the growing insistence in his loins; he doesn’t know how much longer he can hold fast against her jostling, and if he doesn’t take matters into his own hands soon, he might find out a little sooner than he prefers. So he slips a hand around her waist and takes firm hold, rolling her onto her back without disturbing the union of his cock buried deep within her cunt.

But being on top has its disadvantages, the strategist suddenly—and regretfully—surmises, because now she doesn’t have the annoying nuisance of the bed getting in the way of her legs. When he feels her ankles lock around his hips to accommodate his girth more fully, and the telltale sign of his own imminent climax pulses at the base of his pelvis, he forces himself to a halt.

“I’m sorry,” he pants, desperate to delay the inevitable. “I—give me just a moment, if you would.”

He feels her nose nuzzle his damp cheek, followed by the sensation of her lips pressing lightly against his own. He yields to her kiss in an effort to distract himself from his own hypersensitivity afflicting every inch of his flesh, but the fingernails she is dragging up his spine is causing the nerves in his lower back to tingle, and he lets out a frustrated growl as the carnal side of his brain wrenches free will away from the rational one.

His hips move without thinking, his thrusts growing more erratic as her hands find his fingers and entwine them with her own. There was a time in his life that being in control was the difference between life and death, and that losing firm grip over himself meant risking the safety and wellbeing of the people he loved; that time has long since passed, however, and not even the Knights of the Round could save him now, because the blood locked away in the hard tissues of his shaft have reached a saturation point, the hormones flooding his brain sending the appropriate signals to direct the proper flow of seminal fluid, and he is suddenly spilling his hot seed inside of a woman for the first time in over a decade.

But not even a whisper escapes his lips when he climaxes, because old habits really  _did_  die hard, and instead he simply allows his body to relay the messages he cannot adequately express vocally himself. She holds him tightly in her arms through his final throes, raking a gentle hand through his hair and brushing her lips across the light perspiration dotting his forehead, until the last of his strength fails him and his biceps begin to tremble under the strain of his own weight.

For a long moment, neither one of them moves; the stillness of the bedroom is in sharp contrast to his screaming pulse galloping throughout every vein and capillary of his body. Then he feels Ophelia push back on him slightly, followed by the sensation of her fingertips tracing the outline of his jaw. “So much for not being the touchy-feely sort.”

He finally finds enough strength to withdraw from her, and pushes himself upright on the edge of the bed. “Right.”

“You clearly had nothing to worry about. Seems to me all the parts work just fine, after all.”

He then rises from the bed and moves to open the nearest window; whether it was merely a coincidence of his namesake, Ignis wasn’t sure, but his skin always felt like it was on fire after making love, and suddenly the room feels rather asphyxiating. “I suppose not.”

The worry in her voice is evident. “Is everything all right?”

His feature crumple into a frown as he leans his head out the open window. The humid breeze of nighttime Lestallum is doing little to lower his internal body temperature, and he narrows his eyes against the glare of the neon EXINERIS sign he can sense off in the distance. “Yes, of course.”

But he’s  _not_  all right, not really, because as the chaos of the last few lustful minutes begins to clear from his mind, and his feet slowly return to this plane of existence, one singular thought turns over and over in his head:  _What have I done?_

It’s her earnestness that defines her, and he knows it, which is why he isn’t surprised in the least at her next words. “I can’t very well put your mind at ease if you don’t tell me what’s bothering you. Spit it out.”

It wasn’t Ophelia’s fault; he’d always been like this, growing ever more aloof in the aftermath of intimate relations, even when he was younger and the only thing at stake was his reputation, and even—nay, _especially_ —when he was with the one who visited him in his dreams, because while chaste kisses and benign handholding were relatively harmless in the grand scheme of things, there was something about consummating a relationship that put a spotlight on the harsher realities of life.

He gives up on his effort at cooling off and heaves a heavy sigh, retrieving his trousers from the floor as he makes his way back toward the edge of the bed. “I can’t give you what you want, Ophelia.”

“You don’t even know what I want.”

“I don’t think you are fully aware of the challenges that lie ahead. I’d rather not put someone in a position where they have to double as my caretaker.”

"You seem to be under the impression that I am unable to make my own decisions,” she snaps. “And besides—there isn’t a thing I can’t do that I haven't seen you do twice as well.”

“I can’t read. I can’t drive. I can’t even father a bloody child.”

Her ire suddenly dissipates, and she pauses. “You can’t?”

He resorts to stepping into his pant legs to hide his scowl. “I told you, my injuries are not limited to my face.”

She grows quiet on the bed behind him for a long while; it’s only when he is sure his argument has likely spurred her to silently weep into a pillow that he feels her fingers reach out and touch his shoulder. “I’m not asking for a marriage proposal—I’m only asking you to take things one day at a time. Preferably with me.”

A younger, more prideful version of himself might’ve deflected her advances, letting her down gently with the same words he’d used on countless other lovers in the past. But the sincerity in her voice strikes an annoyingly sensitive chord inside of him, and he’s more tired than he used to be; tired of the aches and pains of his lingering injuries, tired of carrying the grief of losing Noct and the redhead and the hundreds of thousands of people he couldn’t save from the Empire and the starscourge, and—most of all—tired of maintaining the walls that still guarded his wounded heart.

So he swallows his dismay and turns to face her, covering the hand she has on his shoulder with his own. “I would hate to be the reason your prospects wind up so limited. You have such a bright future ahead of you, and I feel like I would serve only to weigh you down.”

Her fingers lace with his, and she leans to rest her head against his chest. “Are you happy being alone, Ignis?”

“Not particularly.”

“That makes two of us, then. And if I had to take an educated guess, I’d say there there’s scarcely a person who has ever crossed paths with you who didn’t think you deserved to be happy—not Noctis, not her, not anyone.”

He thinks back to what Cid had said to him, about something tying him down here in Lestallum; maybe there was and maybe there wasn’t, and maybe one day he would eventually return to Insomnia and resurrect his hopes and dreams that had died there all those years ago.

But maybe there  _was_  actually something worth staying here for, a seed worth planting, a relationship worth cultivating. The weight of his skull necklace feels as light as a feather now, and the scent of Ophelia’s Sylleblossom perfume is unlocking a long-forgotten door inside his heart. “Perhaps you’re right,” he says simply.


End file.
